Friday, August 8, 2014

Louisiana Got Its Lethal Injection Drugs From a Hospital Under False PretensesLouisiana Got Its Lethal Injection Drugs From a Hospital Under False Pretenses

Back in May,
a bill was sailing through Louisiana's state government
, which would have allowed the Department of Corrections to keep the
source of their lethal injection drugs secret. They said this was to
protect the
source. Following
a botched execution in Oklahoma, State
Rep. Joe Lopinto
scraped the legislation that he had introduced, saying he “didn't know where this was going to lead us.”
Well, the source of the state's supply of hydromorphone was
revealed, and it's now clear that Lopinto's legislation wasn't about
protecting the source. It
was for protecting the state and protecting its supply.

Because the source of the hydromorphone was
a fucking hospital, one that claims it had no idea that's what the hydromorphone was for, as The Lens reports.

That's where the
secrecy the state had lead them, Joe.

A lawsuit challenging the state's lethal injection practices
revealed that the state bought 20 vials of hydromorphone from Lake
Charles Memorial Hospital,
a week before it was going to execute Christopher Sepulvado, who was
sentenced to death for the 1993 killing of his six-year-old stepson.

The drugs were sent to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center's medical
unit, a “medical facility for seriously or chronically ill offenders.”
But the hospital
never inquired what the drugs were for.

“We assumed the drug was for one of their patients, so we sent it.MORE